Posted
by
Soulskill
on Tuesday March 27, 2012 @11:20PM
from the prefers-diet-coke dept.

mdsolar passes along this quote from an Associated Press report:
"One of Japan's crippled nuclear reactors still has fatally high radiation levels and hardly any water to cool it, according to an internal examination Tuesday that renews doubts about the plant's stability. A tool equipped with a tiny video camera, a thermometer, a dosimeter and a water gauge was used to assess damage inside the No. 2 reactor's containment chamber for the second time since the tsunami swept into the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant a year ago. The probe done in January failed to find the water surface and provided only images showing steam, unidentified parts and rusty metal surfaces scarred by exposure to radiation, heat and humidity. The data collected from the probes showed the damage from the disaster was so severe, the plant operator will have to develop special equipment and technology to tolerate the harsh environment and decommission the plant, a process expected to last decades."

Much of this information is pseudo-health information. Many of these articles/videos have the gist of "OMG! Radiation found in X!" Before Fukushima, before Chernobyl, 1000 years ago: Milk had radiation in it. And arsenic. And today, it still does. Fortunately now, we take readings of it and make sure it is safe. The ones that are bad are tossed out. But the sensationalists will never be quelled by a measured response. When one farm reads radiation levels 10x the allowed amount, and the other 99 farm

Japan does not have so much habitable areas. Considering that a plant failure condemns 1000 km, how many accidents are needed to have the Japanese move to Korea/Australia? In other words, how many nuclear accidents do we need to realize that alternative solutions have to be seriously considered, everywhere?

A fission nuclear bomb consumes a large part of its fissile fuel for its explosion. And it contains a small amount of it, to begin with. When a nuclear reactor blows up, it is usually a non-nuclear explosion (steam release, graphite fire) that spreads unspent nuclear fuel all over an area. They're two different phenomena.

No that is incorrect. An average nuclear reactor does indeed contain ~70 metric tons of uranium metal (not including the weight of the oxygen in the oxide). An average nuclear reactor fissions as many uranium atoms as a Hiroshima bomb every 4 hours and runs for up to two years.

Not only are you wrong about the quantity of fuel in the reactor (it's not a pebble bed, or we probably wouldn't be having this discussion) but the spent nuclear fuel lying around atop the reactor that was set on fire and distributed across the planet by the jet stream says fuck you.

Most of the radioactive part is U-238, which is barely more radioactive than your typical rock (half life 4/4 Billion years).

This argument is misleading at best since toxicity of radioactive elements is incomparable depending on whether the exposure is internal or external. External typical rock radioactivity is probably negligible. Internal exposure of aerosoled U238 is markedly more dangerous [wikipedia.org].

Considering that was only ~.25% of land, I think they'll be alright on the "running out of land from nuclear reactor fallout" for the foreseeable future.

How rare/minor do these accidents have to be before alarmists stop condemning all nuclear activity? Condemn OLD nuclear plants that are no longer safe, sure. Quit trying to stop new plants and technology, that's why the old ones are still running in many cases.

It isn't the safety of the plants they are worried about, it's the safety of the people operating them. Nuclear plants require correct operation and minimum levels of investment to be safe. Governments also tend to fail at monitoring and enforcing the rules.

I don't believe that, and I think you are deluding yourself at best, dishonest at worst. The reason if much more probably because it's more profitable to let things go this way.

Well, reality got tedious and disagreed. Japan discontinued a bunch of new nuclear construction projects from the late 90s to early 00s. Fukushima's lifespan was subsequently extended. I'd say there's a definite cause and effect here.

Math fail.
When one factors in the easily quantifiable expense to clean up the mess of any "accident" like this (never mind the fact that it was actually quite predictable in this case), the almost incalculable impact of such an event on the surrounding community, the expense of "safely" transporting and storing the mess associated with any nuclear power plant (spent fuel and other haz-mat), etc., etc., nuclear power does not seem like much of bargain. Now, if you want to "encumber" the poor nuclear energy industry with regulations that have a realistic chance of preventing events like Fukishima, and if your government has the will to consistently and vigourously enforce those regulations, we can talk. Seriously. Nuclear energy has the potential to be the clean and efficient power source you pro-nuke fanboys want so badly to believe it is, but as long as it is run by profit driven corporate interests, it will never be so. Never.

The contaminated area has a radius of less than 100km and Japan has enough habitable areas - actually all of Japan is habitable. the mountain ranges are - even in the low altitude valleys - nearly empty. There are huge areas covered by rice fields.

I wonder what the average cost of the electricity produced over the life of the plant is now after the tangible costs of clean up are added - not even getting into the collateral radiation damage when cancer rates "mysteriously" rise.

What are the long term costs of anything? But that goes for all other industries just as much. Lets not forget the Santorum frot after the BP oil disaster. What are the long term costs of that? Coal isn't clean either and all that dust is another long term hassle. Will the tar sands really be cleaned up by mining it or will it create an even worse environmental area. What are the costs of mining the minerals needed for solar plants? Just how many birds are killed by wind farms. Just how sustainable is a hyd

Okay, some cards on the table here. I work for a nuclear industry company. I'm not a nuclear anything -- just an IT guy -- but I have seen and learned a lot over the past few years about the nuclear industry and about the Japanese nuclear industry and the Japanese business mindsets and more.

I know the kind of hard-mindedness behind what has led up to Fukushima and what has PERSISTED it. It's the persistence that really gets under my U.S. American skin. In the U.S., we KNOW when we've made mistakes and we learn from them quickly, readily and even hungrily. Sure, we have our share of arrogant assholes too, but it's not our "culture" to be that way. Watching the Japanese in action routinely fills me with a sense of "WTF?!"

Fortunately, not all Japanese are alike. Some think in far better ways. But unfortunately, there are too many arrogant assholes who are still trying to keep it covered up and glossed over and they simply don't want to talk about it. The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) situation uses Japanese nuclear equipment and it has recently been determined that there is a design flaw in it leading to the problems they are experiencing over there. (BTW, does it help to know that the gear in Fukushima is mostly Westinghouse? I suppose not as the problems come from poor disaster planning, maintenance and other factors of implementation... the gear itself was just fine.)

@MrKaos

Sorry bud, but you're just wrong. Nuclear is the best thing we've got for energy. The problems you are identifying is jackasses who don't respect the danger and manage it properly. Do you also think that fire is a bad idea as well? After all, it also has incredible destructive potential but can be perfectly safe when managed properly. Nuclear incidents are rare. Extremely rare. The problem is people who don't understand running and funding these things thinking they can save a few bucks (or yen) here and there or make bad decisions because they have a business partner who could benefit from using one thing over another and so on and on. It's the PEOPLE, MrKaos, which is the problem... and actually, a relatively small number of people at that. I find most people in the nuclear industry to be quite competent and capable. But there are arrogant jackasses everywhere thinking "I could save $1 million by cutting back on...." The problems here are the same as the ones found in the BP oil catastrophe. THE SAME.

I live in Japan, my house in Koriyama is just 33 miles (about 58 kilometers) due west of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station. My Japanese in-laws have a remote mountain house "2nd home" just 21km (1km outside the exclusion zone) in Tamura city where myself, my wife and son lived for a year and a bit before moving to Koriyama.

I completely and utterly agree with what you said, and well said it was too.

It's not the nuclear technology that's wrong, it's the people in charge of running it who are entirely at fault for what happened. The Error Cascade is monumental for Daiichi - not placing the emergency generators up the nearby hill behind the plant, for example.Ignoring people who have been stating for years if not decades, that a 14 meter+ tsunami was more than likely in that area (and others), is another.

There are ancient stone markers all around the coastal areas of Japan, on high ground, left there by previous generations of Japanese, all saying things like "do not build below this level".

And yet, they did. And this is what happens, and their coastal cities and towns get washed away by massive tsunami. And they're planning on rebuilding homes, towns, and cities on the very places that got inundated by tsunami.

After 5+ years of living in this country, I've come to the conclusion that Japan is like a real life gigantic game of Lemmings. If the quakes and tsunami don't get you, then the volcanoes, sulphur gas, flooding, landslides, avalanches, and typhoons will.

But I still agree with you 100% though that civilization cannot live without the energy provided by nuclear power stations, and that's including the Japanese. They just need to re-think the design and layout of any new nuclear plants they might build in the future.

And for those who proclaim that wind and solar are the answer - your grasp of reality is severely depleted. I can see great potential for Japan to use its Geothermal resources, but wind and solar do NOT have the capability to offer a stable and reliable energy supply for a country like Japan, nor do they have the energy density required to supply the cities and towns of that country.

But when we are talking about the failings and propensity for failure as a part of the human condition, I say the solutions are obvious and well established. Massive regulation and control.

Business doesn't like regulation and control. No one does. Hell, for that matter, *I* don't like being regulated and controlled. But it's necessary to protect the masses. We have controls in the markets. We have controls in the nuclear industry. We have f

Whoever submitted this story didn't even read the content of the link s/he provided. There is enough water, although less than thought and it is sufficient to cool the reactor. It is certainly a deliberate lie to claim there was no water.

I also cannot imagine anybody thought that standing right next to the core of a nuclear reactor within the containment was anything less than deadly or that anybody should be concerned about this, the area being, as it was, on the inside of an over 1m thick concrete shell.

I try to keep close to the original headline given the slashdot limit. Sometimes editors change the headline, but this time it went through. If you RTFA I think you'll agree that I caught their tone pretty well. And, certainly, there is no water where they expected it to be suggesting a major problem. I used to write my own summaries pretty often, but now, if the writing is not too atrocious, I just quote because nuts will claim I'm making stuff up either way, but it is quicker to reply when it is a quo

Three quarts per minute for about a week. I've been fretting about it ever since that 'quake busted the reactor in Livermore.Maybe next time the incident will be a significant enough issue that others, too, will notice

FUD? watch this video (and lots of similar ones on YouTube) this is children's playground just outside of Tokyo, nowhere near Fuckupshima, months after the disaster.. the geiger shows 6.4 micro sieverts/h while the normal background level is in 0.1-0.3 rangehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOIDFh3wPXY [youtube.com]

And that's just solar / cosmic irradiation due to the altitude and therefore doesn't even count the exposure from natural concentrations of uranium (and therefore radon). Denver also so happens to be quite the hot spot for that, more so than any other large city/metro.

The legal limit in Japan was 1 millisieverts/year for children, but they raised it to 20 after the accident. Most people still go by 1msv/year, obviously. 6us/h is therefore pretty high for an area like an open playground so far away from the source.

There was a program on the BBC about children living near the exclusion zone. They were measuring 0.8msv/h in the street. Fortunately schools had been decontaminated.

Go in basal, granite mountain, like near limoge in France (massif central) and you get 5 to 10 times as much background radioactivity as in japan. Other country may even have more. That said I would like to see the calibration of that dosimeter. Color me skeptical , as in my life I had dosimeter go haywire on me.

That doesn't mean that the "geiger" (dosimeter) was working properly and was measuring radiation from Fukushima. It could be outright fraud, for example, meant to sell dosimeters for an internet reseller.

If you think I'm wrong, then answer this little question. Who made that dosimeter that is used in the video?

- At 10:10 am on March 26, 2011, we started injecting freshwater to the reactor and are now injecting fresh water by a motor driven pump powered by the off-site transmission line.- At 2:59 pm on September 14, 2011, in addition to water injection from feed water system, we started water injection from piping of core spray system to the reactor.The current water injection amount from the reactor feed water system is approx. 2.7 m3/h and that from the core spray system is approx. 6m3/h.- At 5:21 pm on May 31, 2011, we started cyclic cooling for the water in the spent fuel pool by an alternative cooling equipment of the Fuel Pool Cooling and Filtering System.- At 8:06 pm on June 28, 2011, we started injecting nitrogen gas into the Primary Containment Vessel.- At 6:00 pm on October 28, 2011, a full operation of the PCV gas control system started.- From 9:40 am to 12:30 pm on March 26, the water level and water temperature inside the PCV of Unit 2 was investigated with the industrial endoscope. As a result, the water level was confirmed to be 60 cm from the bottom of the PCV and the water temperature was confirmed to be in the range of approx. 48.5 to 50.0 .- At 12:10 pm on March 27, the amount of injected nitrogen into the PCV was adjusted from 0 Nm3/h to approx. 5 Nm3/h as the internal investigation of the Unit 2 PCV was finished.- At 10:46 am on December 1, 2011, we started the nitrogen injection to the Reactor Pressure Vessel.- At 11:50 am on January 19, 2012, we started the operation of the spent fuel pool desalting facility.

TEPCO should be blamed for their negligence in not raising the height of the seawalls and leaving two big nuclear power stations at the mercy of a tsunami, the executives that didn't do it are 1 year late to jail, but after march their engineers have dealt with the nuclear emergency as good as possible.

First, high radiation messes up electronics. I have a tennis-ball sized chunk of natural thorium ore (thorite), that was just lying on the ground in Colorado. Put it near a digital camera, you get a lot of static (~52 uSv/h of gamma alone on a PM1703 if anyone was curious).

So, you've got radiation levels over 1,500,000 times more than my little rock that causes obvious interference, and non-redundant electronics on a prototype probe someone slapped together with minimal testing. I doubt it was all radiation-hardened sapphire circuitry.

I'd just be wary of drawing too many conclusions from a single measurement from a single probe in such an environment. There's a lot of things that can cause imperfect results, even not in nuclear reactors.

High radiation just does weird stuff. At Chernobyl they had to dive into the water to release a valve (suicide mission, obviously). As I recall the first team couldn't even find it, because ultra-intense alpha radiation had turned the water into H2O2 and it oxidized their suits, skin, and equipment too quickly.

I doubt it's hot enough to melt through the concrete, but just sayin'.

While it's true that radiation will mess with electronics, measuring things like temperature can be done reliably even in the core of an operating power reactor, which is a much harsher radiation environment than this. For instance, an off-the-shelf type-K thermocouple will last a year or two in-core before transmutation causes serious problems.

In this case, the trick is to keep the circuitry out of that kind of radiation but wires, high voltage, and most metals and ceramics will be fine for a while. A good fiber-optic scope will last maybe an hour before becoming too opaque, and you can keep the CCD etc. well away.

While the equipment may not be hardened the results from electrical interference in the analogue to digital stage would show quite obviously if something is affected or not. You said it yourself you got "static". You didn't get a white picture, or a black picture, or a strange blue bias, you got electrically wildly changing signals.

When they do radiography inspection work at the industrial plant I work at you can straight away tell when an instrument is affected. It's not slightly wrong, it's not confusing,

Particles from melted fuel have probably sent radiation levels up to dangerously high 70 sieverts per hour inside the container, said Junichi Matsumoto, spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power Co.

âoeItâ(TM)s extremely high,â he said, adding that an endoscope would last only 14 hours in that condition. âoeWe have to develop equipment that can tolerate high radiationâ when locating and removing melted fuel during the decommissioning.

In other words, they get it that there's high levels of radiation in there and they already have a good idea of how long their equipment will last. Bottom line is that they can take the temperature.

I'd just be wary of drawing too many conclusions from a single measurement from a single probe in such an environment. There's a lot of things that can cause imperfect results, even not in nuclear reactors.

What makes you think it was a single measurement by a single probe? From the article:

A tool equipped with a tiny video camera, a thermometer, a dosimeter and a water gauge was used to assess damage inside the No. 2 reactorâ(TM)s containment chamber for the second time since the tsunami swept into the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant a year ago.

And I imagine those probes took many temperature measurements (probably half a days worth), not just one.

I'm not too familiar with the equipment at issue, but aside from temperatures, excessive radiation also does cause some crystallographic defects which causes embrittlement of steel and so on, so all of this is relative to the amount of fuel for the reaction, &c. Just a modest response to all you "it'll not exceed our safety design, never-never for certain, so go to sleep now little ones..." types.I have heard that the quantity of fuel up for further mishap is quite substantial, but who knows with all th

Well once you create the technology to run the wolds power plants off kittens and sunshine I'll be first in line to protest the nuke plants but till then I'd rather have a nuclear powerplant close to me then a coal plant.

Kittens: Force them to run in a hamster wheel until they die of exhaustion. Burn the corpses in a modified thermal power plant. Sunshine: Molten salt towers for large scale operations, PV panels for small scale operations.

All kidding aside: I agree with your point wholehartedly. Gimme nukes until fusion is feasible.

Sure they could. So in ten years, what do you think they're going to be producing more power from? Geothermal or nuclear? They already have almost all of their nuclear power shut down right now. Should be easy to figure out, right?

False dichotomy. In the 1970s a crystalline solar panel paid back its energy investment in only seven years and today thin film can do it in under three. Or they could have put money into tidal power instead of being in such a rush to industrialize everything they could find which required nuclear. Or even more intelligently, they could have built their manufacturing facilities in some other country, but that amounts to sharing wealth and they learned their lessons from us (U.S.) all too well. Unfortunately

You work for Trollco? I got to see a bit of the video from that camera yesterday. (NHK English-language news program on my local PBS every afternoon.) The water is nasty with rust, but it's certainly not melting.

With the radioactive materials melting their way through the bottom of the vessel,

Well, given what the article says, that is very, very far from likely.

The biggest concern I had as this disaster unfolded was things kept happening that we completely did not expect. This not only showed we were poorly prepared, it showed that our understanding of the situation was severely flawed. It's human nature to look for evidence that confirms our belief, but an objective observer would conclude our belief is simply wrong.

And now we find out that the radiation levels are much higher than expected an

Oh please! To use a/. car analogy this would be like saying cars need to be banned because some LOL got killed driving her 58 Ford with non safety glass. the plants SHOULD have been shut down more than 15 years ago, but instead the government took bribes and kept them running WELL past their limits and you act like that proves anything? The only thing it proves is shitty governments are shitty. Build the latest designs, place thorium reactors next to them to use any waste and voila! A nice safe and clean power source that I would have no problem having a house next to.

So you keep that NIMBY attitude, I'm sure the coal guys will love your ass, me I'll enjoy living in a state where the power is cheap enough many of the apts come with it as part of the rent.

Do not look at enhanced geothermal systems. They do not exist! Continue to argue the relative merits of nuclear and coal. Geothermal is not the cheap, clean, safe renewable locally sourced baseload power you are looking for.

Iceland and NZ have it. For other places drillling deep holes (and fracking - some geothermal uses it too) is either very expensive or never been done to the sort of depths required, but don't call it impossible just because it's not happening now in your own back yard.

Do not look at enhanced geothermal systems. They do not exist! Continue to argue the relative merits of nuclear and coal.

There's a reason we aren't considering it. It's not going to replace nuclear/coal any time in the next few decades.

Geothermal is not the cheap, clean, safe renewable locally sourced baseload power you are looking for.

Cheap? You do realize that a) you have to drill a lot of expensive holes, b) maintain a lot of pipes under highly corrosive conditions, and c) start exploiting sources that are low quality or very deep in order to make up for the current production by coal and nuclear?

Safe? I bet it has more deaths per unit of energy produced than nuclear. And you still have to worry about steam explosions and increased earthquake hazard.

Clean? A little circulation through hot bedrock and that fluid will pick up all sorts of interesting heavy metals (and some radioactive isotopes as well). Then it'll leak. And where are you putting all the corroded pipe you replace?

Renewable? Apparently, the current rule of thumb is that half the initial generating capacity comes from the heat content of the rock that you're cooling. Once that goes away, your long term capacity comes only from below. Running a country like Japan will cool a lot of rock and be something like sucking an aquifer dry. Sure, there will be a renewable component, but I wouldn't be surprised, if in some areas they had to drill deeper and deeper because not enough heat was coming to the plant to keep it viable.

Locally sourced? Beats coal, but not nuclear. With a working breeder reactor, Japan could have had enough nuclear power to run for decades without need for imports.

Baseload power? Sure.

Point here is that geothermal while it has some nice features, is not the straightforward choice you present it as.

Google "china syndrome". A meltdown, in an absolute worst case, can produce enough heat to burn through the containment vessel, the building's foundation, solid rock, etc., all the way down to the water table. As soon as it hits water, heat boils water into steam very rapidly, gigantic steam explosion launches whats left of the reactor building a few miles into the air, and then we all die.

It is like looking at a nuclear reactor and saying it reduces your exposure to U-238 by transmuting it into other isotopes. And guess what - I would be just as correct as your bullshit you have just posted!

Yeah, let's look at C12/C14 atmospheric levels, and proof that we are fucking up the planet for centuries with that (via AGW), but ignore all the radon, heavy metals, carcinogens, thorium, uranium whole crapton of other shit being emitted. Yes, must be quite as correct as stating that Fukushima helped to reduce our exposure to the evil U-238 and U-235. Bravo!

If you represent the modern environmental movement, then I fear we are fucked.

And, you are mistaken about the release as well. The radioactive components remain in the ash and are not released to the atmosphere. And, since the ash has the same radioactivity as the soil that it originally was, with the same naturally occurring elements, there is no increase in exposure by piling coal ash on the dirt that surrounds the plant. It is the same stuff as that dirt in terms of its radioactivity.

Properly working nuclear plants do leak quite a lot of tritium, something that is quite bio

And, you are mistaken about the release as well. The radioactive components remain in the ash and are not released to the atmosphere. And, since the ash has the same radioactivity as the soil that it originally was, with the same naturally occurring elements, there is no increase in exposure by piling coal ash on the dirt that surrounds the plant. It is the same stuff as that dirt in terms of its radioactivity.

Two things to note here. First, ash does get released into the atmosphere. It doesn't all stay at the plant. Second, you are way off on the radioactivity of coal ash. First, coal is commonly more radioactive than normal soil. For example, some uranium mines started as coal mines. The reason for that is that uranium dissolved into water naturally. But when that water hits the chemical environment of coal, the uranium precipitates out and gets locked into the coal.

The radioactive part of coal is retained in the ash which has the same content as the soil it originally was. As I pointed out in my journal article, claiming coal spreads radioactivity is like claiming a bulldozer spreads radioactivity when it moves soil at a construction site. The claim isn't even wrong, it is just stupid.

A bulldozer does spread radioactivity when it moves soil at a construction site, if the soil is it moving has higher concentrations of radiation than the surrounding environment.

The radioactive part of coal is retained in the ash which has the same content as the soil it originally was.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was always under the impression that the soil coal is extracted from has higher levels of lots of stuff, primarily coal, in it. Some of it ends ends up in coal slurry [wikipedia.org] and some of it ends up in coal ash [wikipedia.org].

Was also going explain how burning the coal concentrates the level of radiation in the coal ash,

Nuclear power doesn't have a monopoly because there is all sorts of competition. You are referring to the nuclear weapon oligopoly which is not a monopoly either because there are a number of countries with them, instead of one country.

They did learn. The reason why Japan went into WWII was because they imported large amounts of energy that was easily blockaded. So, they wanted to make certain that they would never again have to suffer such issues. Nukes, done right, is a moderately cheap form of energy. Of course, the 1st gen plants from the 60's are probably not the ideal systems.

So make those responsible take responsibility for the disasters. If a nuclear plant is run unsafely, make the executives and shareholders responsible for any accidents. If people die, then put them in prison etc.

Just don't put all nuclear plants in one basket. After all, if one car blows up we don't have protests trying to ban all cars.

What pisses me off the most is the people who wring their hands and say we should end Nuclear Power based on a first generation commercial design 20 years past it's design life in the most seismically active place in the world on the coast of the country that has such bad Tsunamis that they actually got the world to use their language in naming it. At the same time there have been near zero coverage of the tens of thousands of people and billions of dollars in property destroyed by the quake and Tsunami.

This is all a result of preventing the industry from advancing. Imagine if we were stuck with first generation airplanes? Sure there were accidents as the technology developed and many were killed on the planes and on the ground. But the only way to get better is to do it. We could be sitting here with near limitless energy and zero CO2 emissions if breeders were pursued.

So far, deaths per Joule are lower for Nuclear than any other form of power generation. Additionaly the plants are compact and for countries lacking natural resources, it is feasible to stockpile very significant amounts of fuel, due to its density. There is also plenty of fuel available from politically stable countries and even seawater (at about 10x the cost), putting a cap on the price.